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Vogt | Limits to Growth

IP • Spring • 2007 Global Issues 105

Donella H.Meadows, JorgenRanders, andDennis L. Meadows:Limits to Growth:

The 30-Year

Update. ChelseaGreen Publishing,

2004.

Limits to Growth: The 30-Year UpdatePending environmental disaster mandates revolution from above and below

“Faced with this emergency, the time is not for half measures. The time is

for a revolution—a revolution of consciousness, a revolution of the economy,

a revolution of political action.”(Jacques Chirac on climate change, February 2007).

Roland Vogt | Who among the group of

protestors that occupied a construction

site in Marckolsheim, France, in 1974

would have imagined that 33 years

later the president of France would

declare that the planetary environmen-

tal crisis called for a revolution?

Marckolsheim, on the French side

of the River Rhine where Switzer-

land, France, and Germany converge,

was the location of Europe’s first non-

violent, crossborder ecological cam-

paign to prevent a major, hazardous

industrial project. After a four-month

occupation of the building site by hundreds of multinational activists,

the French government actually pro-

hibited construction of the planned

chemical plant.

This breakthrough was a success

for the Alemanns and the environ-

ment alike, since the plant’s smoke-

stacks would have annually blown

nine tons of lead into the surrounding

environment—in the immediate vi-

cinity of the Kaiserstuhl vineyards.

The plant’s defeat also turned out to

be undeservedly fortunate for the

firm behind the project, the Munich

Chemical Works, which had wanted

to manufacture stabilizers for polyvi-

nyl chloride (PVC) and other plas-

tics—products no longer used today.

The investment would almost cer-

tainly have been a financial loss. In

this way, the young international en-

vironmental movement prevented an

economic flop. Moreover, the Marck-

olsheim occupation served as the

dress rehearsal for the resistance to

building a nuclear power plant inWyhl, on the German side of the

Rhine just two miles away. The 1975

occupation of the Wyhl site marked

the beginning of the movement against

nuclear energy in West Germany—

one of the powerful “new social move-

ments” in the Federal Republic that

would mobilize hundreds of thou-

sands of people and eventually be-

come the biggest democratic, mass

movement in German history.


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Opposition in the Rhine region

was fueled not only by the danger that

such projects posed to the economic

situation of affected populations. Con-

cerns about health and survival were

also powerful motivators. People were

aware at the time that in other indus-

trial locations cows had keeled over

dead near chemical plants and that

the incidence of cancer, especially

childhood leukemia, was higher in the

proximity of nuclear activity due to

exposure to low levels of radiation.

These concerns explain the tenacityof the resistance.

An important factor that contrib-

uted to the emergence of the West Ger-

man environmental movement—and

other environmental movements

around the world—was a 1972 report

entitled The Limits to Growth, commis-

sioned by the Club of Rome, a global

think tank. The report illustrated the

finite nature of the world’s nonrenew-

able raw materials. According to sce-

narios compiled by a US-British-Ger-

man team of economists and natural

scientists (Dennis and Donella Mead-

ows, Erich Zahn, and Peter Milling),

should the trends of growth-driven

economic practices continue, the

world’s natural resources would be ei-

ther almost exhausted or prohibitivelyexpensive around the turn of the mil-

lennium. The report was hugely influ-

ential at the time, translated into doz-

ens of languages and read by millions.

It came just a year before the world-

wide energy crisis.

Twenty years later, in 1992, the

authors adjusted their calculations in

Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global

Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Fu-

ture. But the underlying thesis re-

mained much the same: nonrenewable

resources will be depleted in the fore-

seeable future. In 2000 Dennis Mead-

ows published a position paper argu-

ing that it was no longer possible to

achieve stable conditions based on the

current global population. These mod-

els maintain that exponential growth

contributes to the destruction of in-

dustries, species, and habitats, leading

to economic and social crises.

The recent Limits to Growth: The

30-Year Update maps scenarios of pos-

sible developments through 2100.

Using extensive computer models based on population, food production,

pollution and other data, the authors

demonstrate why the world is in a

potentially dangerous “overshoot”

situation. The main argument, simply

put, is that humans have been steadily

using up more of the Earth’s resources

without replenishing them; the conse-

quences may be catastrophic.

Most computer-generated scenari-

os indicate that the limits to growth

will be exceeded and that collapse will

ensue by 2100, at the latest. If humans

simply persist in the behavior and

economic practices of the past 30

years, there will be an economic and

environmental collapse by 2030

caused by the decreasing availability

of raw materials and the increase inclimate-related natural disasters. In

many cases even rigorous implemen-

tation of environmental protection

and efficiency standards will only de-

crease this trend, not prevent it. With

a global population of nearly 8 billion,

society as we know it—characterized

by sustainable economic activity and a

high standard of living—emerges only

in the computer simulation of an ex-tremely ambitious mix of reigning in

consumption, controlling population

Donella H.Meadows andJorgen Randers: Beyond the Limits:

Confronting Global

Collapse,

Envisioning a

Sustainable Future.

Chelsea GreenPublishing, 1992.


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IP • Spring • 2007 Global Issues 107

growth, reducing noxious emissions,

and introducing numerous other con-

trol measures. Judging by the wasted

interval between the first report to the

Club of Rome and the 30-year update,

this optimistic outcome is probably

unachievable.

The three Club of Rome reports

throw shocking light on industrial so-

ciety and its addiction to exponential

growth. A new kind of ecological en-

lightenment must, however, go beyond

Immanuel Kant’s motto, “dare to

know” to the more action-orienteddirective, “dare to have the courage to

use your own reason.” The second

step of enlightenment is attained if

people have the courage to recognize

the undeniable linkages between

human activity and climate change,

and act accordingly to rectify the envi-

ronmental damage. This includes tak-

ing action even if it means sacrificing

personal comforts.

With humanity facing what could

be the greatest catastrophe in human

history, it is remarkable that the “rev-

olution in political action” declared by

French President Chirac goes only as

far as a UN suborganization for the

environment. With the hole in the

ozone layer and the warming of the

climate both on the rise, humans areconfronting the greatest security risk

imaginable.

The revolutionary breakthrough

in Paris was above all the realization

that the looming climatic catastrophe

is, with 90 percent certainty, the re-

sult of human activity and, second-

arily, that it can still be averted.

The awareness that this window

of opportunity exists, yet could be al-

lowed to close due to the inertia of

politicians and the poor performance

of existing international institutions,

warrants a global state of emergency

and ought to be declared such by the

UN Security Council. There ought to

be a world environmental authority

with locally operational agencies, in-

vested with wide-ranging powers to

intervene in support of required cli-

mate-change measures in countries

that do not or cannot ensure compli-ance with global standards. This au-

thority should be flanked by an inter-

national court with powers to impose

heavy sanctions on states and compa-

nies that willfully disregard environ-

mental standards.

If these measures are not imple-

mented successfully, the only remain-

ing hope is peaceful worldwide upris-

ings aimed at compelling the neces-

sary political action by means of pres-

sure from below. Environmental

movements—in Marckolsheim, Wyhl,

and elsewhere—have repeatedly dem-

onstrated the political potential of

nonviolent mass protest.

Roland Vogt is a former member of theGerman parliament, a cofounder of theGerman Green Party, and former member ofthe national executive boards of the Federal Association of Citizen Action Groups forEnvironmental Protection and the GermanGreens.

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